And The Devil Will Drag You Under (1979) (9 page)

"I don't think our world is so miserable," she re-torted. "Zolkar isn't a place I would want to spend my life."

The demon chuckled. "Why not? Why do people live, anyway? A little bit of happiness, a little bit of love, of satisfaction in accomplishment, then they are gone. We have been trying to perfect the perfect so-ciety for over a billion years, and I freely admit Zolkar is not it, but it is far better than most. Everyone here knows exactly where he stands, his role in society and his place in it. He is brought up to accept it and make the most of it. Missing here are two things which are horrors of your world-uncertainty and fear. I know of no other place on any plane where it is perfectly safe for one such as you to walk a city street at midnight. Is your world with its little petty wars and miseries and overt, violent tyranny so much better? Do not your people desperately seek a God, and go amok because a technological society has no fixed rules? What is so wrong with Zolkar?"

She didn't have to think about that one. "It's totally stagnant," she told him.

The demon nodded. "It is that, which is, of course, one of the flaws we are trying to correct.

But your own political philosophies of utopianism aim toward a technological version of this goal that is far worse-man into insect, or, worse and more probable, man into machine. Please do not go sanctimonious on me about your civilization. A heaven there I leave a ques-tion mark, but even without Mogart you would have a Hell."

She let the remark pass. Arguing fine points of philosophy wasn't getting the job done.

"Getting back to the jewel-the amplifier," she said. "You are bound by the Holy Covenant here even as I am and as all the rest are?"

The white hood nodded. "Of course. The jewels and our knowledge might give us an edge or additional capabilities in any world, but we are bound by its rules." His voice started becoming a little uneasy, as if he scented a trap but was too fascinated to flee.

She smiled inwardly. Her scheme was going to work!

"My world is dying," she told the Holy Elder in as somber a tone as she could manage. "In a matter of hours by its time frame, days here, a giant asteroid will crash into the Earth in that plane.

There is pre-cious little left of civilization and humanity even now -then it will be too late.

Everything has been tried, and everything has failed." She went on to tell, straightforwardly, the story of meeting Mogart in the Reno bar and the last-ditch attempt to gain enough jewels to stop the asteroid.

When she finished, the Holy Elder sat there in silence for some time. Finally he said, "You realize, of course, that the same number of amplifiers required to do what you need can also do almost anything to your plane? Mogart might well be able to stop the destruction with six of them, but in doing so you would be handing the devil the keys to Heaven. The price might be dear indeed."

"Dear!" she exploded. "Dearer than what? My friends and relatives are gone-my world is already gone! Still perhaps a few thousand around the globe, maybe a million, are facing terrible death. Can you think of anything more terrible to me than the extinc-tion of my planet and my people?"

The demon sighed. "No, I cannot," he admitted. "But I'm certain Mogart could."

"If he's so dreadful, why don't
you
come and help save us?" she pleaded. "Surely you could do what was necessary."

"Anybody could with six amplifiers," the demon agreed. "Even you, if you knew how to use them. But I cannot. I am limited to this world and the Univer-sity, as Mogart is to yours. Nor is the destruction im-portant in the scheme of things. It is a large universe that you have, you know, and you are such an infini-tesimal part of it."

That started her again. "You say you're bound by Holy Covenant, yet you talk so glibly of condemning millions to death. It doesn't matter, you say. Let them die. Is
that
the morality of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Covenant?" She was on her feet now, and her spirit was on fire. "I think not! You will give me the jewel because you must! With it we may still lose, but without it we will most certainly die! You
will
give it to me, or you will be answerable for all the deaths of my people! You will give it to me because you have no other choice!"

She stood there in front of the white-robed figure, waiting. It was done. She had shot her wad.

Finally he sighed, got up, and faced her through his white mask. "You know," he said, "you would make an excellent philosophy player yourself. Mogart chose well. You are correct, of course. The devil has found the one way to my power, and I must turn the jewel over. Wait here and I will get it."

He walked out, and she held her breath, not even daring to sit back down. She'd believe he would give her the jewel when she saw it, had it in her hands.

The Holy Elder returned with a cedar box, plain and small, and walked up to her. A taloned hand flipped a latch on the box and popped the lid open. Inside, lying in velvet, was the living jewel that pulsed with un-earthly fire.

She reached out for it, and as she did he said, "Re-member-there
are
worse fates than death, and you may experience them."

"I'll take that chance," she replied, and took the jewel in her hands. It burned but she clutched it tightly.

"If possible, I will get this back to you," she told him.

He laughed. "I shall not lose sleep in expectation of that. It's not so bad, though. I haven't left this tem-ple in over a century as it is."

"You should," she replied. "Go out into the streets and see how the common people live or don't live-particularly the feudal serfs and the beggar children of the city. You have been here so long that you have stagnated yourself. Even within the rules of the Holy Covenant there is room for great improvement, mod-ernization, and change for the better. Perhaps you should tend to some of it."

He shrugged. "Maybe you're right. I'll sleep on it, anyway."

She clutched the burning jewel in her hands and shut all else from her mind.

"Take me to Asmodeus Mogart!" she commanded, and vanished from the room.

Main Line + 2076

ASMODEUS MOGART WAS DRUNK, NOT DRUNK ENOUGH for him, but far too much for anyone else to stand him. This didn't matter, though; although the small Reno bar still stood, he'd remained a little out of phase with it-enough so that he was, in fact, in his appointed plane, but with a far accelerated time rate. This gave him complete access to the booze stocks while the few people and the holocaust building outside seemed to stand still. It was illusion, of course, and he knew it; but it was a pleasant illusion.

A slight note of sobriety intruded into his general feeling of well-being when he suddenly caught the irony of himself, an immortal being who had been here since the beginnings of time for this phase, trying to grab a few more precious minutes, hours, even days of life of this now-dying planet's existence for himself.

There was nothing else for him. Either those two young people came across with the goods or it was the end for him. He wouldn't go back, ever-not to the kind of high-technology lobotomies they'd use-never! Walk around smiling at everyone and tending the little animals and happy and unthinking and unfeeling ...

"Never!"
he roared, and poured himself another drink.

Suddenly there was a sharp pop as air was dis-placed, and he turned, startled, to see the woman-he couldn't even remember her name-standing inside the chalk pentagram on the floor, looking as if she'd never been away. For a moment she was frozen, as if she were a three-dimensional color still photograph, but, quite suddenly, she was filled with animation and turned to face him.

"I have it!" she shouted proudly, and tossed him the jewel.

Mogart was stunned.
So many random factors,
he thought,
yet here it is!
His good fortune was almost beyond belief.

"Anybody chasing you for this?" he asked worriedly.

She shook her head. "Nope. Nobody. I got it fair, square, and clean, which is about the only thing you can do in Zolkar."

Hope suddenly flickered again inside him. "But it's only the second," he pointed out, as much to himself as to the woman. "Four more must be acquired before there is enough power. Even three will not do."

Almost as one, Mogart and Jill McCulloch looked at the clock behind the bar.

It was seven forty-five on the evening of the last day.

He sighed and pocketed the gem. "Let's be off-we have no time to lose," he said, and walked unsteadily toward the pentagram she had never left. He staggered a bit as he entered it, and she had to catch him.

"You sure you're all right?" she asked worriedly.

He brushed it off. "Never better!" he announced a bit too loudly. "Let's away!" Both vanished from the bar.

Their world had nine hours and fifteen minutes to live.

Main Line + 1502 "Here"

1

MAC WALTERS FELT THE SHOVE AND WAS SUDDENLY thrust forward from the void in which he had been seemingly suspended into bright sunlight. He felt slightly dizzy and fell to the hard, claylike ground. It took him several seconds to get hold of himself and stand up.

Wherever this place was, it wasn't the world's most appetizing. It was hilly, hard, dry,
and
the only vegeta-tion of note was a lot of scraggly desert grass and sage-brush. It was terribly hot, and there were no clouds in the sky to block the rays of the sun. He was also nude, which was unexpected. He felt totally alone, exposed, unarmed, and uninformed in a hostile
and
alien environment.

Now what the hell do I do?
he wondered silently.

He looked up and around. Some birds or something, over just beyond the next rocky hill, were circling around and occasionally dipping below his line of sight. He cocked an ear and listened carefully.

Nothing. Nothing but the sound of birds occasionally screeching far off and a very slight sound, almost a hissing noise, that he couldn't make out.
Not snakes,
he decided. Something natural-more like the wind, although there was certainly none on this dry, parched landscape.

Mogart should have told me more about what to expect,
he growled to himself. How was he supposed to find the jewel, let alone get it from the little man's counterpart here? There didn't even seem to be any people.

He decided to see where the birds were coming from, got up, and started off. The ground felt oddly springy, not at all like the hard clay it appeared to be. Sala-manders raced to and fro from sparse grassy plot to grassy plot, paying him no notice at all.

There's something wrong here,
he told himself as he tried to think, to figure out what it was.

He was halfway to the rocky hill beyond which the birds still occasionally flittered when he realized the discontinuity:
I have no shadow!
he thought, startled.

Idly he kicked a small pebble with his bare feet. The pebble didn't move-or if it did, it didn't move much. His foot seemed to pass right through it.

What the hell is going on here?
he wondered, confused and a little anxious.

He made his way up the hill toward the birds. He felt gravity, and he felt the hill in that slightly soft, unreal way, but he disturbed nothing in his climb. It was an easy grade, anyway; he was at the top in a few minutes.

The hissing noise was the sound of a small river twisting and bending through the parched land.

It was an old river, meandering all over the place, yet slow and shallow. It emerged from a great red-rock cleft in a hill to his left, ambled past in a canyon perhaps ten meters below the surrounding land, and vanished into the land in the distance, its twists and turns making it nearly impossible to follow.

Still, hidden in the canyon was a thick line of trees and almost swamplike vegetation. In a dry land where there was water, life clung to the moisture and thrived in abnormally crowded conditions.

He made his way down the hillside to the bank just above the river. The water itself looked about a hun-dred meters across and was muddy, but judging from the occasional rocks in the middle, it appeared to be no more than thigh-deep at its worst. He decided not to chance it unless he. had to-no telling what was under that muddy coating.

There appeared to be a trail of sorts partially over-grown with weeds from the riverbank, and he followed it, noting that he neither disturbed the vegetation nor found it substantial to his touch.

The trail led past pools of stagnant water buzzing with dragonflies and other insects; the birds that swept to and fro from sky to river seemed to nest in the small but thick trees that lined the banks.

Neither the insects nor the birds seemed able to see him.

The trail, if in fact it was such, seemed to lead back up toward the red-rock canyon. He stopped a mo-ment, trying to decide what to do. He felt lost, helpless.

This is no way to go into something you don't know or understand,
he decided. But what, then, to do?

He was still standing there, uncertain and disgusted, when he heard a voice call his name.

"Walters! Mac Walters! Where are you?"

There was no mistaking the reedy tenor-it was Mogart.

"Here! Down here!" he shouted back, a corner of his mind noting that even his shout did not disturb the surrounding wildlife.

"Just stay there! I'm coming to you!" Mogart re-sponded. Walters shrugged and waited. At least this was
something.

It took the ungainly Mogart quite a bit longer to negotiate the hill than it had Walters, and when the demon was within sight it was clear that Mogart was definitely not human. "Demon" was, in fact, the most accurate descriptive term for the strange little man. But he was a demon in very poor condition, Walters decided as Mogart approached huffing and puffing from the little bit of exertion.

"Sorry I couldn't be here immediately," the demon apologized. "It took a bit of time to get your counterpart settled. Fortunately, the time differential was wide enough so that your wait wasn't
too
long."